Tumblr Fandoms, Community & Culture

Serena Hillman Abstract Simon Fraser University A growing trend is the participation in online fandom 250 – 13450 102nd Avenue communities through the support of the blogging Surrey, BC, Canada, V3T 0A3 platform Tumblr. We investigated Tumblr fandom users’ [email protected] motivations behind participating in fandoms, and how they interacted within the Tumblr community. Our Jason Procyk results show that fandom users feel their Tumblr Simon Fraser University experience is ‘always-on’ where they participate at 250 – 13450 102nd Avenue nearly any point in the day. They have also adopted a Surrey, BC, Canada, V3T 0A3 unique set of jargon and use of animated GIFs to match [email protected] their desired fandom activities. Overall, our results show that Tumblr fandom users present a unique Carman Neustaedter culture, much different from other social networking Simon Fraser University sites. 250 – 13450 102nd Avenue Surrey, BC, Canada, V3T 0A3 Author Keywords [email protected] tumblr; social networking; fanfiction; fandoms; culture

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Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed HCI): Miscellaneous. for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Introduction CSCW'14 Companion, Feb 15-19, 2014, Baltimore, MD, USA. In recent years, Tumblr has increased dramatically in ACM 978-1-4503-2541-7/14/02. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2556420.2557634 popularity and has become one of the fastest growing social networking sites. Recently, Tumblr hit mainstream attention when it was purchased by Yahoo! (May 2013). At this time, Tumblr contained 108.4

million blogs and reported 75.8 million posts were There also exists a body of literature that explores being created every day. social networking sites. Within the largest social networking site, Facebook, user motivations include Tumblr is described as a blogging site where users can maintaining awareness of friends’ activities [1], post small messages in the form of text, photos, coordinate offline socialization [1], and building quotes, links, audio, and video. These posts can be relationships [6]. Perhaps the most notable use of tagged for key terms, and other users can then search social networking and fan use in academic studies is for tagged key terms to find posts to re-blog, like, the notion of backchannels. Backchannels are the live share, and/or follow the other user. Once users follow blogging of television shows or media events [e.g., 3]. an individual, their posts are displayed on their Studies have mostly approached these topics from a dashboard. Within the Tumblr site, fandoms (the quantitative approach. While valuable, we see an community that surrounds a television show, movie or obvious gap in in-depth knowledge around the use of book) have become key contributors. These users write fandoms and even more so from a descriptive stories about the characters in the show; they also qualitative standpoint. analyze particular scenes in a show through posts. The above related work provides a general background While other studies have looked into online for our study and shows us that while fanfic and social backchannels of live entertainment events by networking sites have been studied in a variety of ways investigating other micro-blogging sites such as Twitter and objectives, there is a lack of research on Tumblr [e.g., 3], Tumblr blogging has not yet been studied. and, specifically, fandoms within the site.

Related Work Study Methodology The study of offline fanfic—“writings in which fans use Our study consisted of three qualitative stages. First, media narratives and pop culture icons as inspiration for three months prior to selecting and contacting for creating their own texts” [2]—has a long history participants, we observed a number of Tumblr from a cultural and communication perspective. Jenkins fandoms. During this time we became familiar with [5] brings forth the idea that, in fanfic, fans emerge as common practices and categorized images and actual co-partners in the creation process and evolve beyond posts into common themes. Second, participants a passive audience. Pugh [7] described fanfic as 'the completed a short, open-ended survey online to democratic genre'. From these scholars it is clear that contextualize our findings and interview. Third, we fanfic is an activity where fans feel they can contribute conducted semi-structured interviews. For this stage we to a body of work that they are passionate about. Past recruited seventeen participants by contacting them studies have looked at a variety of topics within fanfic, directly on Tumblr. Users were found randomly through such as: how writing fanfic on online websites helped the study duration by searching tags of popular users practice English, learn cultures [2], fanfic jargon fandoms for user’s contributions. The fandoms we [4], and canon gatekeeping [8]. selected include a range of different types (e.g.,

popular, indie, different TV networks, etc.). These Jargon. While observing and analyzing posts, we participants’ ages ranged from 19 to 31. Occupations of learned that users have appropriated and created these participants varied and users resided in North terminology that fits the types of activities they America, South America, Western and Eastern Europe. participate in. Below we introduce some of these terms. At the end of the interview, we asked the participant to walk us through their most recent posts. One True Pairings (OTPs) is a set of characters that fans pair together (in a romantic relationship). Fans will We analyzed our interview transcriptions and notes refer to all OTPs relationships in all fandoms as simply using open, axial, and selective coding. The data ‘ships’—derived from the word relationship. Users also collected revealed a complex and unique social frequently discuss the term endgame. A user’s networking experience. Our associated video describes endgame represents how they would like their otps to this experience through visuals to further describe the end up together at the end of a series. OTPs and ships fanfic activities of Tumblr users. are very important to the Tumblr fandom culture because they often drive what users call ‘feels.’ Feels Figure 1. Tumblr post on the Findings describe when a user has high emotion towards any always on nature of Tumblr Tumblr Love. Every participant we interviewed fandom related event. When a user experiences an described a key component to Tumblr as being a place overwhelming amount of feels, they can express for people to “strongly unite over something”. While the themselves by typing: alksjdf;lksfd. This text is meant social networking site was built primarily as a blogging to represent a user pressing random keys in platform, it is flexible and has been appropriated by the uncontrollable excitement. While there are a number of Tumblr community to be much more. The sentiment of other terms used within Tumblr and fandoms, those most of our participants was ‘absolute’ love for the described represent the most prevalent. Tumblr community. They appreciated that they have common interests with other Tumblr users and that Discovery. The concept of belonging to a fandom in other people are willing to analyze, and generally Tumblr is fuzzy. Unlike Facebook, you do not get obsess over the same things that they do. accepted to groups. You are part of the fandom when you think you are. Users reported finding Tumblr The GIF. Another key characteristic of Tumblr through a web search for related information on the compared to other social networking sites is the heavy television show and thus accidently found a Tumblr use of images. This visual component arose time and blog. Second, some users joined Tumblr not specifically time again in our interviews and was also very to participate in fandoms, yet as they began following noticeable during the initial monitoring period of our users, they learned about fandoms through their study. The majority of these images come in the form dashboard. Besides cross-pollination, in some cases of animated GIFs or GIF sets. We have learned through users will ask for recommendations for a new fandom our study that understanding the role GIFs play is to be part of. It should be noted that when asking for important in understanding the Tumblr culture. recommendations, users seem just as interested in the

value of joining the fandom as the value of the actual the discussion of topics such as abortion, suicide, I would say it's me. It's the watching of the television series. feminism and sexism. "real me" I don't get to be in my everyday life. – P2 Always on. Most participants described their Discussion & Conclusion interactions in terms of ‘always on’ technology. That is, In this paper we described the motivations behind The fact is that [Tumblr’s] they described the process of engaging with Tumblr as participating in fandoms, and how they interact within users can be themselves in an experience that continuously occurred, telling us, for the Tumblr community. This has allowed us to better ways that they would not be example, “I always have a tab open.” This being said, understand a broader set of social networking sites by able to anywhere else. I engagement within Tumblr varies from time to time learning about motivations, practices, and social participate as "me", and and migrates between active posting and staying aware interactions of Tumblr users. In future work, we hope sometimes as how I would of the posts of others. to explore these findings to inform new alternative like to be in real life. I feel methods to create successful social networking sites. more confident about myself Motivations. Our findings indicated that there were a there. – P7 number of mechanisms that motivated users to what References extent they engaged with Tumblr fandoms. These [1] Barkhuus, L., and Tashiro, J., Student Socialization Figure 2: The Real Me. P2 and included: strong feels around OTPs, recognition by in the Age of Facebook, Proceedings of CHI 2010, pp. 133-142. P7 explains how they represent peers and show officials, being able to be more “real” themselves on Tumblr because of the anonymity, and the ability to participate [2] Black, R., Language, Culture and Identity in Online Fanfiction, E-Learning, Volume3, Number 2, 2006. pp. in social justice. 170-184.

As Tumblr is known for the ability to remain semi- [3] Doughty, M., Rowland, D., and Lawson, S., Co- Viewing Live TV with Digital Backchannel Streams, anonymous, some of our questions focused on Proceedings of EuroITV 2011. pp. 141-144. I've learned so much about understanding the level of anonymity users were [4] Ensslin, A., Canonizing Hypertext: Explorations and employing. We use the word semi-anonymous because, sexism, feminism, and other Constructions, London, Continuum. (2007). social issues that I didn't 1) some participants used this term, and 2) most users said while their friends and family did not know about [5] Jenkins, H., Textual Poachers: Television Fans and learn anywhere else, people Participatory Culture. London: Routledge. (1992). critique media as well as view their blogs, they felt they could find them if they really [6] Joinson, A., ‘Looking at’, ‘Looking up’ or ‘Keeping and discuss it, so it is a really wanted to. A key finding in this area was that users up with’ People? Motives and Uses of Facebook, felt they were more themselves on Tumblr then in the interesting mix of art and Proceedings of CHI 2008, pp. 1027-1036. discussion in a pretty easy ‘real world’ (see figure 2). That is they felt the [7] Pugh, S., The Democratic Genre: Fanfiction in a anonymity allowed them to be more themselves. blogging site. - P4 Literary Context. Bridgend, Seren Books. (2005).

Figure 3: Social Justice. P4 Another underlying tone around motivation to use [8] Thomas, B., Canons and Fanons: Literary Fanfiction Online, Digital Dichtung Journal, Volume 37, January explains how the Tumblr amongst participants was the presence of “social 11, 2007. Community’s focus on Social justice” within the different fandom communities. Our Justice has impacted them participants used the word “social justice” to describe